In the first half of 2018, Apple, the world's most powerful electronic technology company, announced the 2018 version of its top 200 suppliers. In Apple's own words, these 200 suppliers represented Apple's global raw material, manufacturing and assembly expenditures in 2017. 98%T

In the first half of 2018, Apple, the world's most powerful electronic technology company, announced the 2018 version of its top 200 suppliers.

In Apple's own words, these 200 suppliers represent Apple's global raw material, manufacturing and assembly expenditures in 2017 98% of the amount

This list is our top 200 suppliers, including component providers and others representing at least 98% of procurement expenses for materials, manufacturing, and assembly of our products worldwide in 2017.

Let’s take a look, and Apple’s global revenue in 2017 Compared with the top 200 suppliers, what changes have taken place? In the value system of the global electronics industry chain, Chinese companies are rising step by step.

Because I found that there are always many mistakes in online news reports. For example, some said that the number of Chinese companies has decreased, from 26 last year to 21.

This is inconsistent with sensory logic, because in 2017, our country’s economy was in a recovery and upward trend, so why would it continue to decrease?

So I went to Apple’s official website and downloaded the full version of the 2018 supplier directory. It has 30 pages in total. Not only does it list 200 suppliers, it also lists the addresses of all factories.

Since there are different opinions on the online news, in order to find out thoroughly Situation, I listed all the companies and factories in the report in the form of an excel sheet. Of course, I actually did it. I found that counting 200 companies and 778 factories is a tedious task. In addition, many companies don’t know who they are just by looking at their names. Which country it was from had to be verified one by one, and each factory had to determine which country it was in based on its address information. It took a lot of time, but I finally understood why original news is so valuable.

Among Apple suppliers in 2018,

ranked first in number in Taiwan with 51 companies;

in second place was Japan with 44 companies;

in third place was the United States with 40 companies;

in fourth place was China with 34 companies, including 7 companies in Hong Kong, China. These 7 companies are Huacai Printing, Cathay Daming, Yili Sheng, Lianfeng, Jinqiao Aluminum Profile, Lingsheng City, Yingcheng Enterprise , basically doing printing, metal parts, packaging, headphone accessories and the like.

In fact, there is another company, Bourne Optical, which is also owned by Hong Kong, but I count it as being in mainland China for the time being.

In fact, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry is still very strong, but it has only been completely de-industrialized in Hong Kong.

These seven suppliers in Hong Kong have a total of 21 factories, all in mainland China.

There are 27 companies in mainland China on the list, 7 more than last year.

These 27 mainland Chinese companies are: AAC Technology , Bourne Optics, BOE, BYD , Hongming Shuangxin, Ultrasonic Printing Board, Eton Electronics, Goertek Acoustics, Hengmingda, Changdian Technology, Jinlong Electromechanical, Corson Technology, Lens Technology , Luxshare Precision, Meiyingsen, Kaicheng Technology, Shandong Innovation, Shanghai Industrial Holdings, Desai Batteries, Shenzhen Fuchengda, OFILM , Xinwei Communications, Shenzhen Yutong Packaging. Anjie Technology, Dongshan Precision, OmniVision Technology, Sunwoda

I also wrote about Apple’s top 200 suppliers in 2017 last year.

At that time, I wrote 23 companies (18 in mainland China + 5 in Hong Kong). Correction here,

Chinese mainland manufacturers last year omitted King Long Holdings and OmniVision Technology, there should be 20. OmniVision Technology was originally an American company, and it was completely acquired in early 2016, becoming the full name of Beijing OmniVision Technology in China. capital subsidiary.

There were 7 manufacturers in Hong Kong last year, excluding Huacai Printing and Lianfeng.

So last year there were 20+7 suppliers in mainland China + Hong Kong, China, and this year there were 27+7 suppliers. There is no doubt that the number has greatly increased.

The fifth in the world is South Korea with 11,

the sixth in the world Germany has 6;

there are 14 suppliers in 7 other countries around the world, including Singapore 3, Austria 2, Finland 2, the Netherlands 2. , 2 in the UK, in Belgium, in Switzerland and 1 in Saudi Arabia.

From the distribution of Apple's global suppliers, we can see a very obvious pattern:

East Asia has already taken an advantage in the global electronics supply chain . The number of suppliers in Japan + South Korea + China (mainland + Hong Kong and Taiwan) has Accounting for 69.5% of the world's

Europe has not only collapsed in the field of consumer electronics brands, but has also declined in the field of electronic industry components. It only accounts for 8% of Apple's top 200 global suppliers. Europeans currently rely more on Automobiles, aerospace, chemicals, luxury goods, etc. live.

The United States not only has strong brands in the brand field such as Apple, HP , Dell , but also still accounts for about 21% of the world's electronic components industry chain. However, the advantages of American companies are mainly in semiconductor products.

Regarding the changes in suppliers in 2018 and 2017, China has made the fastest progress, and the number of suppliers in the United States has decreased the most.

Not only that, let’s take a look at the change trends in 2017. 28 suppliers have changed, that is, 28 suppliers have changed. Suppliers are out and 28 new suppliers are entering.

These 28 companies have been eliminated:

5 companies in Taiwan, China; 4 companies in South Korea; 2 companies in Singapore; 7 companies in the United States; 6 companies in Japan;

1 company in Germany, 1 company in the Netherlands, 1 company in Hong Kong, China, and 1 company in Ireland

Please note that, Not a single mainland Chinese company is out.

Exit list:

Taiwan: Kangshu Technology, Haihua Technology, Fuyouhong (laptop speaker supplier), Crystal Technology Co., Ltd., Zhending Technology

South Korea: Bumchun Precision Co.Ltd (a manufacturer of precision structural parts for headphones)

Yilite (display materials), Hee Star Electronics; Samsung Electro-Mechanics

Singapore: Broadway Industrial Group, Lateral Solutions Pte.Ltd (providing components)

United States: Eaton Corporation, Invensense (MEMS microphone manufacturer), Linear Technology Companies (mixed and digital signal ICs)

Molex (connectors), Santank holding Ltd (acquired by Eaton), SanDisk, Infront Fastener

Japan: Furukawa Electric Industry Co., Ltd., Ifiden, Mitsumi Electric, NEC Tokin Corp (electronic components), Nihon Denpa Industry Co., Ltd. (NDK), Polyma Technology

Giesecke Devrient: German SIM card manufacturer, providing Nano-SIM cards to Apple

Lungte Hsin plastic Hongteli Plastic , this is a Hong Kong company

PCH international: Apple, Xiaomi supplier manager Ireland

Philips Netherlands

Then the list of new entrants in 2018:

New entrants:

7 companies in Taiwan, China; 1 company in Hong Kong, China, and 7 companies in mainland China 1 each in South Korea, Germany and Finland; 3 in the United States; 7 in Japan.

7 companies in mainland China: BOE, Meiyingsen, OFILM, Changdian Technology, Baicheng Industrial, Hengmingda, Kaicheng Technology

7 companies in Taiwan: Ming'an International Enterprise Co., Ltd., Gu Song, Pengding International, Jingshuo Technology, Pegatron United, Platinum Technology (optical glass material), Zhisheng (mobile phone case).

7 companies in Japan: Fujikura, Nippon Mining & Metals, Renesas, Seiko Ink, Sekisui Chemicals, Sanbon Chemicals, Toda Industries

3 companies in the United States: Amkor, Apollo Global Management, Koch Industries

The other four companies It is

South Korea's Posco Steel, Germany's Wickeder Group, Finland's Stora Enso,

Yingcheng Industries of Hong Kong, China. This is a company that makes precision molds and injection molded precision parts.

Let’s take a look at the increase and decrease of enterprises in various regions:

Taiwan, China has added 2 companies,

Japan and Finland have added 1 company,

China has added 7 companies, which is the largest increase.

South Korea decreased by 3, Singapore decreased by 2,

Germany and Ireland each decreased by 1,

the United States decreased by 4, which was the largest decrease.

Chinese companies have the largest increase in number and the fastest growth rate, but what about the quality? Next, let’s take a look at the changes in value. Among the consumer electronics components, the most valuable or most watched products are the following six categories:

1: display panel;

2: various semiconductor devices (memory, flash memory, Processors, discrete devices, etc.);

3: camera modules;

4: functional devices (acoustic devices, antennas, vibration motors, filters, etc.)

5: passive components (can be thought of as resistors, capacitors, inductors, in fact radio frequency devices For example, the antenna is also a passive component, but it is listed as a functional device for simplicity)

6: Structural parts (glass cover, metal middle frame, connector, charger, battery, PCB, FPC, etc.)

in 2017 Among Apple's top 200 suppliers, there are 19 mainland Chinese companies,

but these six categories of parts are mainly in the fields of functional devices and structural parts.

For example, AAC Technology and Goertek are suppliers of acoustic devices. Jinlong Electromechanical is the supplier of vibration motors, and Xinwei Communications is the supplier of antennas. In addition, in the semiconductor field, OmniVision Technology, which was acquired by Chinese investors, is Apple’s CMOS image sensor chip supplier. So in total, there are Chinese suppliers in three categories.

In the 2018 global supplier list, we see the rapid progress of Chinese companies.

In 2017, Chinese companies only entered three of the six major categories, but by 2018 they had entered five of the six major categories.

Among them, the most influential and important thing is that BOE has entered Apple's top 200 suppliers for the first time.

Display panels are the most expensive components on mobile phones, tablets and laptops.

Chinese companies have achieved a breakthrough in Apple's supply chain for the first time. major. Of course, this is just the first step in a long journey. BOE currently only provides screens for Mac notebooks. BOE has not yet entered Apple's Iphone series, which has the highest sales volume, and no Chinese company has entered yet. It still needs efforts.

I have to mention Japan's JDI here, which is also the only Japanese display panel supplier among Apple's top 200 suppliers.

The Japanese display panel industry has suffered a very serious decline under the impact of China and South Korea.

Japan Display Inc. (JDI), Japan’s only large-scale mass-produced display panel manufacturer, announced its financial report for fiscal year 2017 in May 2018 (from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018), with revenue of 717.522 billion yen, which is approximately 43.05 billion yuan at the current exchange rate.

fell 18.9% from 884.44 billion yen (53.07 billion yuan) in fiscal year 2016. In terms of net profit,

had a net loss of 247.231 billion yen (14.83 billion yuan) in fiscal year 2017 and a loss of 31.664 billion yen (1.9 billion yuan) in fiscal year 2016. Comparing the two, the loss in fiscal year 2017 was 6.81 times that of fiscal year 2016.

In 2015 alone, JDI's revenue scale exceeded that of any Chinese counterpart.

2015 revenue: BOE 48.62 billion yuan, JDI 59.36 billion yuan (989.3 billion yen, converted at today's exchange rate)

2016 revenue: BOE 689 billion yuan, JDI is about 53.07 billion yuan (884.44 billion yen). BOE achieved catch-up with JDI this year.

2017 revenue: BOE 93.8 billion yuan, JDI only about 43.05 billion yuan (717.522 billion yen).

In just three years, BOE's revenue has reversed from 81.9% of JDI's to JDI's only 45.9% of BOE's. The

display panel used to seem like an unattainable high-tech technology, requiring not only excellent technology but also a huge amount of capital. In fact, once you break through, you will find that it is actually nothing.The reason for the decline of

JDI is also relatively simple. Due to the decline of Japanese terminal brands, the Japanese electronic components industry is dependent on Apple. Because Chinese and Korean brands purchase domestic components at a higher proportion, Apple's trends have a negative impact on Japanese components. It has a major impact on the industry. JDI's losses expanded to 681% in 2017, mainly because Apple, which accounts for half of its revenue, used a large number of OLED panels in the iPhone X launched in 2017, which will reduce JDI's LCD share of Apple It is caused by panel supply, and OLED is exclusively supplied by Samsung.

On the other hand, under the impact of Chinese companies, competition in the small and medium-sized LCD panel market has intensified, which has also led to JDI's profit decline in LCD panels.

Of course, it is a bit regrettable that currently domestic display panels have not collectively broken through the flagship phones on mobile phones. Huawei The flagship phones currently on sale, Mate 10, Mate 10 pro, P20, P20 pro, are mainly made of Samsung, LG and JDI screen. But the breakthrough of domestic display panels is coming soon. In the next five years, it will not be a big problem for domestic display panels to fully surpass domestic flagship mobile phones and even Apple Iphone mobile phones.

In terms of semiconductor devices, the first Chinese chip company to become one of Apple's top 200 global suppliers has been born.

Although no chip company born in China has yet become one of Apple's top 200 suppliers,

but through continuous acquisitions, China has Breaking into Apple's supply chain in the semiconductor field.

On the evening of May 14, 2018, Weir Co., Ltd. issued a major asset restructuring and suspension announcement, stating that the company was planning to acquire the equity interests of Beijing Haowei Technology Co., Ltd. and Beijing Sipico Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., and this matter constituted a major asset restructuring.

Beijing OmniVision's main business is mainly carried out through OmniVision Technologies Inc. Howey Technology was originally a NASDAQ listed company in the United States and was also one of Apple's top 200 suppliers in the world in 2018.

The company completed privatization in early 2016 and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Beijing Haowei. OmniVision is a leading provider of digital image processing solutions. Its main business is the design, manufacture and sale of semiconductor image sensor equipment. Its Camera Chip and Camera Cube Chip series CMOS image sensor chips are widely used in consumer and industrial applications. . Sony, Samsung and OmniVision are the top three high-end CMOS image sensors in the world.

Beijing Sipico Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sipico") is mainly engaged in the research and development and sales of image sensor chips. It is one of the well-known image sensor chip design companies in China.

Sipico's products are mainly aimed at the mid-to-low-end field, and

Beijing Haowei's products are mainly for the mid-to-high-end field.

After the completion of this transaction, a full-field image sensor chip manufacturer will be born in China, and Vail will become one of the industry giants in the field of CMOS image sensor chips from a distributor.

In fact, the current chairman of Weir Co., Ltd. Yu Renrong has also become the CEO and director of Beijing Haowei. Not surprisingly, there will not be much suspense about Vail's acquisition of Beijing Haowei.

In fact, strictly speaking, there is still one Apple chip supplier in my country.

That is the British mobile GPU chip supplier Imagination, which was notified by Apple in April 2017 that it would stop supplying in the next 15-24 months. This company and Qualcomm , ARM together are one of the three largest mobile GPU technology companies in the world. According to the time point of

, the company is still a supplier of Apple, and it was acquired by Chinese capital in September 2017. The current CEO of the company is Dr. Li Liyou, the former chairman of Spreadtrum and president of Ziguang. The acquisition of the company has greatly enhanced China's strength in the mobile GPU field.

However, Apple has not included it in the list of top 200 suppliers, probably because the purchase amount is already relatively small.

A relatively big progress in the field of semiconductor devices in 2018 is that

my country's leading enterprise in the field of packaging and testing, Changdian Technology Company, successfully became Apple's top 200 suppliers for the first time, achieving a breakthrough.Of the three major links of design, manufacturing, and packaging and testing, packaging and testing has the lowest technical content. However, no matter what, a breakthrough by Changdian Technology is always a good thing. Being recognized by Apple also shows that our country has made great progress in the field of integrated circuit packaging and testing. It's relatively fast.

On the other hand, we must also see that the United States is in an absolute dominant position in the field of semiconductor devices,

ADI, Broadcom, Microchip, Intel, Knowles, ON Semiconductor, Micron, Qorvo, Qualcomm, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, AMD , Lingyun Semiconductor, etc. are all Apple suppliers. This is also the area where Americans have the strongest advantage.

But let’s look at it from the other side, why do we always say that the United States is relatively de-industrialized? It can also be seen from the consumer electronics parts industry chain that American companies are mainly concentrated in the semiconductor field and have retreated in other fields. With the

camera module, a Chinese company has also achieved a breakthrough for the first time. The

camera module is also one of the most expensive components on smartphones. In fact, in the past, digital cameras were just cameras + storage, and they could still be sold very expensively.

cameras have developed from rear cameras to coexistence of front and rear cameras, from rear single cameras to dual cameras. Now Huawei's benchmark camera phone is selling like hotcakes. The P20 pro has three cameras, and in terms of functions, it also has 3D cameras. Overall, the camera Modules are in a state of becoming more and more expensive.

In fact, the camera function has now become one of the core functions for mobile phone manufacturers to compete. Whether the camera is good or not has become the most critical feature to measure whether a mobile phone is high-end. When an average customer goes to a store to experience a mobile phone, nine out of ten customers will do so. Have a photo-taking experience.

The high-end mobile phone camera market has always been occupied by LG Innotek, Sony, Sharp , and Samsung mainly supplies itself.

China's OFILM Technology achieved a breakthrough in Apple's supply chain by acquiring Sony China's South China factory at the end of 2016. Sony's South China factory accounts for almost all of Sony's camera module production capacity. The sale of the South China factory basically means Sony's withdrawal from the camera module market. In fact, with Sharp also being acquired by Foxconn , Japan has basically withdrawn from the field of camera modules.

In April 2017, OFILM Technology successfully completed the acquisition and delivery of Sony South China Electronics. Through resource integration, OFILM Technology has greatly improved its production line automation transformation and the research and development and process of high-end camera modules, and successfully Enter Apple’s camera supply chain system.

OFILM successfully entered Apple's list of the top 200 global suppliers, which is a huge progress. Cook visited OFILM's factory in December 2017 and specifically posted on Weibo that OFILM provided front-end equipment for iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Set up camera.

OFILM's pace has obviously not stopped yet. Currently, Sharp's camera business is also in decline. LG Innotek is the overlord of high-end camera modules. OFILM, as well as another company, China's Sunny Optical, although it has not entered Apple's supply chain, is very powerful. It is a matter of time before substitution is gradually realized in the high-end field.

In fact, if we don’t just look at the high end, but just in terms of market share, OFILM and Sunny are already the top two in the world.

goes one step further. As mentioned above, after Vail completed the integration of OmniVision Technology and Sipico this year, the CMOS image sensor chips in the camera module are also gradually completing the road to localization.

It can be seen from the above that in the six major fields of display panels, semiconductors, camera modules, functional devices, structural parts and passive components,

in Apple's top 200 global suppliers list in 2017, Chinese companies mainly focus on functions. In the device and structural parts section,

, one of the leaders is AAC Technology, one of the companies with the highest net profit margin in Apple's supply chain. It mainly provides acoustic devices such as speakers and touch motors. In 2017, its revenue exceeded RMB 21 billion, a year-on-year increase. 36%. Net profit exceeded RMB 5.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32%.

Acoustic Technology's acoustic devices (mainly active sound-generating devices based on micro speakers) accounted for 45% of its revenue in 2017, and its revenue, mainly touch motors and wireless radio frequency structural parts, accounted for 50% of its revenue.

Don’t be fooled by its name into thinking that AAC Technology is just an acoustics company. In fact, in 2017 it has completely become a comprehensive technology group, covering acoustics, wireless radio frequency, optical lenses, glass covers, touch motors, etc. A functional device.

Goertek is often compared with Goertek. The company achieved operating income of 25.573 billion yuan in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 32.59%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 2.145 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.91%. The company also went On the road to diversified development, the two companies are actually gradually going their separate ways.

also provides antennas for Xinwei Communications. Its operating income in 2017 was 3.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.35%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 889 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 67.25%.

In the structural parts section,

also provides glass covers from Bourne Optics and Lens Glass, Sunwanda and Desai Batteries that provide batteries, Fuchengda, Jinqiao Aluminum Profiles, and Corson that provide various metal structural parts. Technology, Lingsheng, provides PCB circuit boards from Eton Electronics and Ultrasonic Electronics, Dongshan Precision provides FPC, Luxshare Precision provides connectors and wireless charging modules, BYD provides chargers, etc.

By 2018, with the entry of two giant companies, OFILM and BOE, there are also Chinese suppliers in the fields of display panels and camera modules.

Of course, we found that among the six major fields, five fields (display panels, structural parts, functional devices, camera modules, semiconductors) have Chinese suppliers.

Even in the semiconductor field, there are two companies, OmniVision Technology and Changdian Technology.

However, in the field of passive components, China (Mainland + Hong Kong) is still completely blank. Capacitors, resistors, and inductors seem to be very simple things. However, to make things very precise and highly reliable, it requires a lot of attention to the process. The requirements are not low. Japanese companies are completely dominant in this field.

However, in the field of passive components, Chinese companies have also encountered a rare window of opportunity for many years, which is the sharp increase in the price of resistive and capacitive components starting in 2016. The picture below is a CCTV report in June 2018. Prices are still rising.

In an industry, there are leading companies that can control the market. A typical example is Samsung.

In the past two years,

has gradually shifted its display panel production lines to OLED and shut down its LCD screen production lines, resulting in 2016-2017 Market supply is tight and LCD prices have risen sharply, directly benefiting manufacturers such as BOE. In other words, Samsung's behavior can determine whether other manufacturers make money. The same goes for

in memory. Because Samsung is the absolute leader in technology and production capacity, when Samsung raises prices, the market will inevitably follow the price increases. When Samsung reduces prices, the market will inevitably follow the price cuts. The prices of products that are more advanced than yours have dropped, and you must follow suit.

In the field of passive components, Japanese companies are the dominant ones.

Sales ranking of global passive component manufacturers in 2016, please note that only passive component revenue is calculated:

Murata, the world's first, 5.319 billion US dollars

Japan's TDK, the world's second, 5.174 billion US dollars

Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the world's third, 1.728 billion US dollars

Japan, the world's fourth Taiyo Yuden US$1.64 billion

The fifth in the world, Vishay, the United States, US$1.092 billion

The sixth in the world, Taiwan Yageo, US$837 million

The seventh in the world, Kemet, the United States, US$592 million

The eighth in the world, China Fenghua Hi-tech US$398 million

Data source: Domestic Finance Moneta Research

under the new think tank also includes Taiwan Huaxinke, Qilixin, Lilong Electronics, He Shentang, China Jianghai Co., Ltd., Sunlord Electronics, Fara Electronics, Yuyang Technology, Aihua Group, etc.

It can be seen that Japanese companies are in an absolute dominant position, so the trends of Japanese companies can influence and determine the direction of the industry.

The price increase trend of resistors and capacitors that started in 2016 can be said to be second only to the price increase of memory. The entire electronics industry chain feels painful events.

, especially MLCC (Multi-layer Ceramic Capacitors) multi-layer ceramic capacitors, which are necessary products for consumer electronics. There are many types of capacitors. Ceramic capacitors have the advantages of being less affected by temperature, long life, and miniaturization. They account for 10% of capacitors. The proportion has reached nearly 60% and is still rising. Among them, MLCC accounts for more than 90% of ceramic capacitors.

MLCC generally can be used on a flagship mobile phone to reach several hundred pieces, and it is constantly increasing. Taking iPhone as an example, the amount of MLCC used in the iPhone 4S era was still about 500 pieces. By the time of Iphone 8, the amount of MLCC used has reached 1,000 pieces and more. above.

my country is the world's largest consumer of MLCC, with total import value reaching US$5.62 billion in 2017.

Since the second half of 2016, leading MLCC companies such as Japanese manufacturers Murata and TDK have gradually turned to automotive MLCC production and gradually closed the relatively large-sized MLCC production lines. The reason is that large-sized MLCCs are relatively low-end and have low profits. The rate is not high, which has caused a surge in MLCC in the field of consumer electronics.

According to statistics from Japan's METI agency on June 14, although the price increase has lasted for more than a year, the average selling price of Japan's MLCC industry in April 2018 still increased by 8.6% month-on-month. The industry generally expects this round of increase to occur in 2019. The price tide will end. Some institutions even predict that it will be until 2020.

Therefore, from 2016 to 2019, China's passive component companies ushered in a rare period of strategic opportunities .

The MLCC industry is a typical high-tech and high-investment industry. Therefore, if later manufacturers want to enter, they will have to pay a lot of costs. However, in the past few years, due to fierce competition among Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean manufacturers, the market price has been rising. The decline has brought great obstacles to latecomers from mainland China, because it means that high investment means high losses, which is obviously unbearable.

Due to the rise of automotive electronics, Japanese manufacturers struggling with price competition have found an outlet and hope. The number of MLCCs used in a car is far more than that of consumer electronics. If the number of MLCCs used in a mobile phone is several hundred, Then the amount of MLCC used in a car, especially an electric car, is several thousand.

According to data from Murata, the number of MLCCs used in electric vehicles is 2,700-3,100, and they are all ultra-high-end products. Compared with cars and smartphones, the difference in usage between the two can reach 10 times.

therefore turned to automotive production, which became a means for Japanese companies to improve their operating conditions and get rid of the quagmire of low profit margins. However, this directly led to a sharp increase in the price of MLCCs for consumer electronics products.

In 2017, the top three domestic MLCCs Fenghua Hi-tech, Yuyang Technology, and Chaozhou Sanhuan all achieved rapid growth.

According to the 2017 annual report of Tianli Holding Group, the parent company of Shenzhen Yuyang Technology, the group's MLCC business revenue in 2017 totaled 739 million yuan, year-on-year. An increase of 26.2%.

Fenghua Hi-Tech's operating income in 2017 was 3.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.94%; net profit after non-attributed profits was 163 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 384.61%.

Sanhuan Group 's operating income in 2017 was 3.13 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.39%; net profit after deducting non-attributed profits to the parent company was 1.003 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.61%.

Currently, MLCC manufacturers, led by Fenghua Technology and Yuyang Technology, are expanding production and developing into small sizes and automotive applications.

Not only that, the industry boom has also driven the performance of Torch Electronics, a passive component manufacturer that mainly supplies military products in my country. Torch Electronics released a semi-annual performance forecast in June 2018. It is estimated that the net profit in the first half of this year will be 175 million yuan ~ 192 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50%-65%. Among them, Q2 single-quarter net profit was as high as 121 million yuan to 138 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth range of 51% to 72%.

Torch Electronics' military business accounts for about 70% of its self-produced business revenue. In addition to its full military orders, the company stated in the announcement that it benefited from the high prosperity of the industry and the gross profit margin of self-produced MLCC civilian products and component trade increased significantly. It is expected that the high prosperity of the industry will continue, driving the company's main business product MLCC to continue to grow.

To put it bluntly, both Koreans and Japanese have made wrong decisions in the past two years (2016-2017). South Korea and Japan are respective industry leaders in the field of memory and passive components, while China is their biggest buyer.

The Koreans (Samsung and Hynix) have made DRAM and NAND FLASH increase in price crazily.

The Japanese have made passive components increase in price like crazy.

Although this has gained short-term benefits, it has greatly stimulated the growth of Chinese companies. Once China Once the company begins to grow in size, has industry impact, and can take advantage of the vast market to reduce costs, its rise will be greatly accelerated.

Of course, both Koreans and Japanese are not unaware of this, and they also have their own frustrations.

Take the memory overlord Samsung Electronics (note that it is not a group) as an example. In the past few years, Samsung Electronics has undergone a huge change, that is, in 2013 alone, Samsung Electronics was still a mobile business with medium operating profits (mainly (mobile phones) accounts for about 70% of the company. However, as the mobile phone business has been impacted by Chinese companies globally, by 2017 its mobile business operating profit was less than half of 2013. In fact, Samsung Electronics’ operating profit in 2017 About 70% comes from the semiconductor business.

In just four years, 70% of Samsung Electronics' profits came from mobile phones to 70% of profits coming from semiconductors.

This means that the nature of Samsung Electronics has changed. Don't think of Samsung Electronics as a mobile phone company anymore. It should be regarded as a semiconductor company, just like Samsung Electronics was regarded more as a home appliance company in the past.

We can imagine what Samsung Electronics' operating performance and stock price will look like if the price of its semiconductor business does not increase.

Samsung’s move to increase memory prices is also a necessary choice from an operational perspective.

The Japanese have the same reason.

In fact, the best choice is to maintain the production capacity of consumer electronics products, even large-size MLCC products that are not very profitable. Maintain the production line to drive down the price of the mid-to-low-end market and set up obstacles for the development of latecomers. , while investing money to expand the automotive MLCC production line.

But this places high demands on the financial status of Japanese companies. Due to the operational financial pressure faced by Japanese companies, they naturally tend to get rid of low-end production capacity and concentrate their efforts on redirection, which brings opportunities to Chinese companies.

The boss of Huawei once said that in the field of communication equipment, Western companies were in a state of making a lot of money. This gave new companies such as Huawei an opportunity, because as long as they can make products, they will have huge profit margins and gain huge profits. development opportunities.

Therefore, after Huawei became the dominant company, it only obtained reasonable profits. In fact, looking at Huawei's financial reports, the net profit margin has never been high, about 7%, which seems a bit low for a high-tech company. In fact, the net profit margin behind The logic is to eliminate and stifle the desire of latecomers to enter the industry and reduce potential competitors.

The sharp rise in MLCC prices has given Chinese manufacturers, which have always been small-scale and lacked motivation to expand production, a three-year period of opportunity. By seizing this wave of opportunities, China's passive component industry will have a relatively large development.

Judging from the situation in the first half of 2018, domestic passive component manufacturers led by Fenghua Hi-Tech have maintained a high growth rate.

In the first quarter of 2018, Fenghua Hi-Tech achieved operating income of 842 million, a year-on-year increase of 35.17%; net profit attributable to owners of the parent company was 116 million, a year-on-year increase of 327.69%. If you look at the gross profit margin, Fenghua Hi-Tech's gross profit margin in the first quarter reached 30.4%, an increase of 8.2 percentage points compared with 22.0% in the first quarter of 2017.

Of course, during this process, domestic downstream manufacturers will suffer greater pressure and even pain from the price increase. The ultimate solution to this problem is for domestic manufacturers to have absolute market share and production capacity.

In fact, Fenghua Hi-Tech’s net profit in the first quarter of this year was 116 million yuan. Doesn’t it seem a lot?

But if we push the time forward to 2015, Fenghua Hi-Tech's annual net profit was only 62 million yuan. This is the net profit of my country's largest passive component manufacturer. It is obviously impossible to catch up with the world's top level with this little money.

can also see how desperate it was for China's passive component industry to catch up with the world's first-class level just two or three years ago.

In fact, relying on the global price increase of passive components launched by Japanese companies, Fenghua Hi-Tech achieved a net profit of 139 million in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 125.18%. In a sense, we really have to thank the Japanese for this round of opportunities.

and above. Through Apple’s global suppliers, we can clearly see the distribution of the global electronics industry chain. Let me make a summary here:

1: The electronic components industry is a game for a few people.

is mainly participated by five regions in the world: the United States, Japan, Taiwan, China (Mainland + Hong Kong), and South Korea. Elsewhere there is only sporadic distribution.

Europe can be said to have declined. In such a large industry as consumer electronics, from terminal brands to upstream components, Europeans can be said to have basically withdrawn from the competition. There are only 16 Apple suppliers in Europe in total, mainly in the semiconductor field. . There are 40 companies in the United States and 44 companies in Japan.

2: The number of Chinese companies will increase rapidly

This article only talks about the changes in one year from 2017 to 2018. Chinese companies have made breakthroughs in camera modules, display panels and other fields. In fact, if we take 3-5 years as the dimension , looking at the changes in Apple’s top 200 suppliers, the rise of Chinese suppliers will be even more surprising.

If we look back from now to 2020, this time is actually not too long, that is, there is still more than a year, and the number of Chinese companies will increase a lot.

Taking semiconductors as an example, Jingfang Technology, a Chinese company that makes CMOS image sensor packaging, is likely to enter the Apple supply chain.

Suzhou Jingfang Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. mainly provides customers with reliable, miniaturized, high-performance and Cost-effective semiconductor packaging mass production service provider. Jingfang Technology's CMOS image sensor wafer-level packaging technology, according to the company's own statement, "revolutionized the world of packaging, making high-performance, miniaturized mobile phone camera modules possible. This value has made it the first application in history The most extensive packaging technology, nearly 50% of image sensor chips can now use this technology, which is widely used in various electronic products such as smartphones, tablets, and wearable electronics."

Jingfang Technology has nearly 2,000 employees worldwide. There are about 400 engineers and scientists, more than 50% of whom have advanced degrees.

The other one is the target material. Jiangfeng Electronics is growing rapidly and is likely to enter the top 200 suppliers of Apple. There are four main companies in the global sputtering target market, namely JX Nippon Mining Metal and Honeyway. Er, Tosoh and Praxair collectively monopolize 80% of the global market share. Among them, JX Nippon Mining Metal is an Apple supplier.

Goodix Technology, which makes fingerprint recognition chips, is already the largest company in the world and is fully capable of becoming an Apple supplier.

Others include Sunny Optical. Its optical lens shipments have grown at an alarming rate and have been highly recognized by global mobile phone giants other than Apple. I don’t think it will be a big problem for this company to enter Apple’s supply chain in the next few years.

Of course, there are also and Cambrian AI chips, but Apple probably won’t buy Cambrian’s IP. After all, Cambrian has already cooperated with Huawei.

At present, a large number of companies can be said to be standing at the door of Apple's supply chain.

We can compare it with six years ago. Six years ago, Apple's "2012 Supplier Social Responsibility Progress Report" first disclosed that the company's Among the 156 global suppliers, 8 mainland Chinese companies are on the list, including Anjie Technology, USI, , BYD; AAC Technology; Kunshan Changyun, Tianjin Lishen, Lens Technology, and Suzhou Panel Electronics .

went from 8 companies in 2012 to 27 companies in 2018. This growth rate is amazing.

3: Understand the true strength of the United States and why they want to fight a trade war from the global electronics supply chain.

We can actually see from Apple suppliers that the core area where Americans lead the world is IT,

in semiconductors (integrated circuits + discrete In the field of devices), they have a high and almost monopoly position, while other Korean, Japanese, and European companies have only made achievements in some chip fields.

Therefore, as long as the Americans want to sanction any downstream company, they can cause an almost devastating blow to it.

And China is the biggest challenger in this regard.

We can see the CMOS image sensor chips that have helped Sony's net profits continue to rebound in recent years. China will integrate the new giant Weill this year;

In integrated circuits In the memory field with the highest market share, China's Yangtze Memory and GigaDevice are constantly advancing construction;

is in the processor market HiSilicon, Unisoc and Xiaomi Pinecone have covered various types of processors in high, middle and low-end, and

is in the mobile GPU market. market, China has also become the top three mobile GPU companies in the world through acquisitions.

In the emerging field of AI chips, China already has giants such as Cambrian, Horizon, Bitmain, and Shenzhen Technology, especially Bitmain, which has become a global company with annual revenue of over 10 billion yuan through its development in the field of mining machines. The chip giant has entered the field of artificial intelligence chips with the help of accumulated funds.

It can be said that Cambrian and Bitmain each have their own advantages.

From our point of view, China's semiconductor industry is still very weak, and the Americans are still the hegemons. Therefore, the ZTE incident has made many Chinese people feel very depressed. They feel that our work has been in vain for so many years, and we are still left hanging in the high-tech field.

But from an American perspective, China is a very formidable opponent. It has begun to have established competitors in all fields, especially companies such as Huawei HiSilicon, Unisoc, Bitmain, and Cambrian. It has considerable strength.

If we look at it from the perspective of Americans, there will be a sense that "the window of opportunity left for the United States is running out. In three years, five years, and ten years, it is difficult to imagine how far China will develop. Then there’s no chance to contain” the feeling.

In fact, we can see from the changes in Apple's suppliers in just one year in 2018 that China is making rapid progress in all fields.

In three years and five years from now, the number of Chinese suppliers in Apple's supply chain will be much greater than it is now. If the number of companies increases, many American, Japanese and Taiwanese companies will be squeezed out.

On the other hand, although the United States is extremely powerful today, in the field of electronic technology, if the absolute hegemony of the United States in semiconductors is broken by China, what will be left of the United States in the global electronics supply chain?

From the six aspects of structural parts, passive components, functional devices, display panels, camera modules, and semiconductors, if the United States declines in the semiconductor field, then Americans will basically withdraw from the world's most popular column in the field of electronic technology.

We all know that the United States exports five major items: agricultural products, automobiles, semiconductors, aerospace, and drugs.

Considering that the United States has lagged behind Germany and Japan in the automotive field, it is no longer a global hegemon. At the same time, Chinese automobiles are also rising;

Aviation In the aerospace field, China is engaged in COMAC, Beidou satellite navigation, and space stations;

If the core semiconductors in the field of electronic technology are damaged by China again,

then the United States will only have two major industries: medical pharmaceuticals and agricultural products with absolute advantages, and the United States will still have absolute advantages. It will be an advanced country, but its global hegemony will be difficult to maintain. The following figure shows the structure of U.S. export commodities.

The semiconductor industry is one of the few industries with high output value and profit that can influence or even control the industrial development of other countries. At the same time, the United States has an absolute advantage. It can be said that it is clearly related to the national destiny of the United States. January 2017 , the report "Ensuring U.S. Semiconductor Leadership" submitted specifically to the then U.S. President Obama by the U.S. President's Science and Technology Advisory Committee, almost entirely regarded China as a competitor, while targeting semiconductor companies in Europe, Japan, South Korea and other regions. , Americans don’t seem to care at all.

In this sense, Americans are very clear about the significance of the semiconductor industry to themselves.

It is not difficult to understand that the trade war between China and the United States is considered by some foreign media to be a semiconductor war.